


Walking the Bear

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-03
Packaged: 2017-12-28 07:30:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They win at life. Twice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking the Bear

**Author's Note:**

> This double helping of silly fluff is for oddmagic, Lady_Blade_WarAngel and Yuuko_Ichihara, they recently expressed a desire to see something like this in fic. Hope it brings a smile to y’all’s faces! Nothing owned by moi except the silliness and hope.

“We are Knights Errant and We Live in Sin,” Jaime says with aplomb.

“Jaime.”

“Too long? You’re right, it needs to rolls off the tongue more easily.” He grins at Brienne, the tip of his tongue peeking out between his teeth. She blushes, remembering how he woke her that morning, but she does not turn away. _Not quite the shy wench of yesteryear_ , Jaime thinks. “We Ride Around Living in Sin, how’s that?”

“I wish you would let it go.”

“Come on, wench! We need our own House words. Help me out here.”

“We are hedge knights without two copper stars to rub together. We are not a Great House. We are not even a House, period.”

“I did ask. Several times, if you recall.”

She does look away then. “I do recall,” she says softly, face pink, freckles brown. “We are well past the point where you would need to wed me in order to bed me.”

“That’s not why I asked, Brienne.” His voice is gentle, but there is an underlying tone of sadness there. “It’s not like I have aught but my name to offer you.” _Maybe that’s the problem_ , he thinks, not for the first time. _Better Brienne of Tarth, the Kingslayer’s whore and a free woman, than Brienne Lannister, wife of the Maimed Lion from a broken House._

She is still avoiding his eyes. She tugs on her jerkin, trying to make it lie flatter. All that does is emphasize the gentle bump. Jaime’s hand curls of its own accord, as it does when he strokes her belly at night, under the stars. 

“This child does not need the name of a noble House,” she says, and he starts. It bothers him sometimes that, while she cannot hide her feelings from him, he cannot seem to hide his thoughts from her. “All he or she needs is skill with a sword,” Brienne continues. 

“If you say ‘and a sense of honor in wielding it,’ I am going to look for a tavern and warm myself with ale instead of you.” 

She looks at him then, her eyes never failing to hold him captive. “A sword, and us. We need not be wed for that.” 

She will not let him win this, he knows. He does not mind as much as he lets on. But for her stubbornness, he would have died more than once already.

He pokes at the fire with a stick, not looking at the way her hands cradle her belly without seeming to know they are doing it. “What about a sigil?” he asks with forced good cheer. “If you will not consent to our own words, we at least need a sigil. I think a bear would do nicely.”

When she does not say his name in that fond, exasperated way she has, he looks up to find a small smile hovering on her face, revealing her horsey teeth. “Our hairy matchmaker,” she says, and Jaime laughs. 

“A kindly old bear, honey on his snout, ambling along, bothering no one,” he pursues. “On a quartered background of crimson and blue. With ‘We Live in Sin and If You Don’t Like It You Can Talk to the Bear’ written underneath in big gold letters.” 

Brienne huffs, rolls her eyes in a way guaranteed to make his eyes crinkle in a smile. “ _That_ certainly rolls off the tongue,” she grouses. 

*

“Don’t forget to walk Bear,” Brienne calls from where she is comfortably ensconced on the couch. Stretched out almost as long as the couch, the St. Bernard lifts his big, slobbery head from his forepaws at the sound of his name. Brienne pats him, and the dog lies back down with a tired huff. 

“I walked him yesterday,” Jaime replies from the kitchen. 

“No, you didn’t.”

He appears in the kitchen doorway, a cheese-encrusted spatula in his hand. He brandishes it at Brienne like a sword. “Are you calling me a liar, woman?” 

She grins at him over her belly. “I named you liar a long time ago, Jaime Lannister. You don’t fool me. I walked Bear last night after work, and the night before that, and…” 

“I am making you cheese toast,” he interrupts, “and was _planning_ on making you come at least once at some point tonight, must I do everything around here…”

“… eight months along, and it’s raining, and you are the one who wanted to get such a large dog when I wanted a Retriever or a German Sheppard.” 

“He reminded me of our bears,” Jaime says placidly. 

He proposed to her the first time at the zoo, with two brown bears as witnesses. He had to shout the question over the noise made by a gaggle of schoolchildren. Brienne was saved from responding in words by their high-pitches screams of delight. Just when Jaime was starting to think even the bears looked embarrassed on his behalf, she leaned in, kissed him on the cheek, and told him to ask again tomorrow. 

So he did. 

It had been quite a few tomorrows since then. Nearly six months’ worth of tomorrows. 

“He is big and strong and he tugs on the leash fit to rip my arm out,” Brienne responds. “That is why you wanted him, he reminds you of you.”

Jaime grins, salutes her with the spatula. “So kind of you to acknowledge I am big, Brienne.” 

She rolls her eyes, blushes, her pregnant belly heaving with suppressed laughter. Or annoyance. It can be a bit difficult to tell which where Brienne is concerned. 

“By the way, have I asked yet today?”

“You have, over breakfast.” 

Jaime thinks back. “That doesn’t count. My mouth was full of toast, as I recall, and you were lumbering around getting ready for work. Brienne, will you marry me?”

Usually she responds instantly. Not this time. There is a considering pause, then she looks him in the eye. “Ask me one more time tomorrow, and I’ll say yes.”

“Really?”

She smiles, horsey and freckly and all his. “Yes. Your cheese is burning.”

For a second, Jaime thinks this is some odd new euphemism he hasn’t heard yet, then he smells the acrid aroma coming from the oven. “Damnation!” 

Brienne laughs delightedly while he dashes back into the kitchen. “Now you have to walk Bear _and_ get melted cheese off the bottom of the pan.” 

“And ask you to marry me one more time,” he grouses over the noise of running the tap, dumping the pan in the sink, opening the kitchen window, hitting his shin on the open oven door. “If I’d known you would be so demanding, I’d have left you for the bears.” 

“But it’s worth it. How else would you carry on the Lannister name?” 

“Oh, I’d find a willing woman somewhere. Question is,” he comes into the sitting room, shows her his burned thumb, “would she kiss my war injuries better after all the trouble I went to, to satisfy her cravings.” 

He leers on the word _cravings_ , and Brienne glares, reaches out for his hand. Kisses his thumb, bites it gently. 

Jaime hums in appreciation. “Now kiss my shin.” 

Brienne hits him with a cushion. Bear sniffs the aroma of burned cheese, sighs with canine exasperation over human folly.

**Author's Note:**

> Yuuko_Ichihara drew the sigil Jaime proposed in the first half of this fic. Behold its magnificence [here](http://media.tumblr.com/de920f05bda87016361d1f2d85dc7521/tumblr_inline_mu7jfbuSuf1so6pxo.jpg).


End file.
